FALCON CREST: Season 1 (Lorimar, 1981-82) Warner Home Video
The world of a primetime soap opera is perforated by
cliché and hyperbole. That said, few of any vintage can compete with Earl
Hammer's Falcon Crest (1981-1990); a richly distilled vintage, featuring
hallmark characters, and, ongoing familial strife, centered on the gripping
struggle to possess some of the most fertile land in California's Tuscany
Valley wine country. Throughout its 9 season run on CBS, the series stirred
with a creative sparkle that saw Falcon Crest's matriarch and grand dame,
Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) conduct the business of running an empire on her
own ruthless terms - much to the chagrin of newly arrived man of integrity and
rival owner, Chase Gioberti (Robert Foxworth), also, Angela's long lost
prodigal son, newspaper magnet, Richard (David Selby), and her grandson,
playboy and polo player, Lance Cumson (Lorenzo Lamas in tight pants).
Interesting to consider Foxworth and Wyman here – mostly, as the former’s
career until Falcon Crest had been spent largely playing the baddie,
while Wyman’s tenure – as a bonafide and Oscar-winning star from Hollywood’s
golden age, was in service to promote her fresh-faced virtue and wholesome warmth.
Role reversal, indeed! Other reoccurring notables in the cast included William
R. Moses, as Chase’s hunky son, Cole, Abby Dalton as Angela's troubled daughter/Lance's
mother, Julia, Susan Sullivan as Chase's ever-devoted and pure-of-heart wife,
Maggie, Ana Alicia as the devious and backstabbing heiress, Melissa Agretti,
and, the delightful, Margaret Ladd as Angela's youngest, Emma, initially reported
to be mentally challenged but, as time wore on, revealing herself to be the only
one, generally speaking, to operate in the full faculty of human understanding
and compassion.
Created by Earl Hamner, Jr. as a ‘family drama’ originally
entitled The Vintage Years, Hamner deliberately sought out Wyman as his
star, riffing off her ensconced ‘nice-lady’ image to add dimension and sympathy
to the character of Angela Channing, an otherwise scheming and generally ‘cold-blooded’
business woman. The pilot was shot with Wyman donning a grey-haired wig.
However, after screening it, Wyman petitioned Hamner for changes – particularly,
to allow Angela to emerge as less of an old and embittered crone and follow in
the footsteps of Dallas’ J.R. Ewing. Indeed, when Falcon Crest
premiered, many critics were quick to judge it as ‘Dallas with grapes.’
To some extent, the parallel has merit, although as time and the series
evolved, Falcon Crest continued to distinguish itself as a stand-alone
entity with characters and situations all its own. CBS hoped for Hamner to
clone the success of Dallas (1978-91), then, the network's runaway hit.
Slotting the soap in the 10 pm time slot, right after Dallas proved
another shrewd business decision as each piggy-backed off the other, with Falcon
Crest almost immediately attaining a spot in the top-20 in the Nielsen
ratings. Produced by Lorimar for television, Falcon Crest settled into
its niche as a primetime soap more glamorous than Dallas, but not nearly
as outrageous as Dynasty (1981-89). Audiences were captivated by Falcon
Crest’s cosmopolitan settings, toggling between the rustic beauty of Napa
Valley and wry sophistication of San Francisco, the rivalry between Angela,
Chase, and Richard, basically fueling every confrontation to surface throughout
its 9-year run. In the early years, an ego-driven Lance and reluctant Cole were
pitted against one another in this battle royale for control of Falcon Crest’s
fertile lands; also, in their rising affections for Melissa who, after seducing
Cole, preferred the more studly and daring Lance, but gave him formidable grief
in exchange for the pleasure of her company.
As with its competitors, Falcon Crest reveled
in its season finale cliffhangers: Season 1’s bringing the mystery of
who killed Melissa’s father, Carlo Agretti full circle, but with a catch to
keep the audience on tender hooks until the start of Season 2: the last
scene at the end of Season 1, depicting shots ringing out and a cutaway
to a draped coffin being lowered into the ground. Rather uncharacteristic for a
primetime soap, Season 3’s cliffhanger involved a plane crash in which
three out of four of the show’s major players met their untimely end. In Season
4, a bomb explosion left Richard and Maggie in peril, while a devastating earthquake
threatened the rest of the inhabitants at the end of Season 5. For Season
6, Chase, Melissa, Richard, and newcomer, Dan Fixx (Brett Cullen), were
faced with drowning on a sinking ship, while in Season 7, Melissa, through
machinations best left to be discovered, took control of the winery, much to
Angela’s chagrin. In hindsight, the series topped out in Season 7,
having embroiled Richard in a consortium of international espionage, only to
wake up after being drugged by its femme fatale (Ursula Anders) and discover
her lying dead next to him in bed. From 1982 to 1985, Falcon Crest never
fell out of the Top 10 in the ratings thanks to its small army of skilled
writers, and, like its contemporaries, continued to cull together an
ever-evolving roster of talent from Hollywood’s golden age as its reoccurring
guest stars, including Lana Turner, Gina Lollobrigida, Cesar Romero, Robert
Stack, Cliff Robertson, Celeste Holm, and Kim Novak.
As he had done for television's Dynasty (and
would later do for Dynasty II: The Colbys), maestro, Bill Conti set the
musical tone for Falcon Crest with a bombastic and stirring orchestral
accompaniment – a brassy flourish and fanfare of strings and drum roll to
idyllically frame its drama with great pomp and circumstance. Still, what is
best remembered about the series today is its intrigues, its diabolical twists,
but most of all, its continuity. While Dallas was hinged on building a
groundswell of anticipation for each season's 'cliff hanger', and Dynasty
continued to introduce, then jettison major characters indiscriminately,
leading to its sloppy decline in bad writing, Falcon Crest derived its
strength and audience popularity from an ever-tumultuous and intricately
unraveling central narrative - producing episodes that tended to become their
own cliffhangers in miniature while building into the highlighted and much
anticipated season finale. Season 1 of Falcon Crest begins with a
murder; Chase's drunken father (and Angela's brother) Jason, bent on thwarting
a romantic rendezvous between his niece, Emma and an oversexed farm hand. After
accidentally pushing Jason to his death, a shell-shocked Emma fetches Angela
who, in order to protect Emma from incrimination, commands her manservant, Chao
Li Chi (same name as the actor who played him) to dump Jason's body into a
steep ravine.
The news of Jason's death is relayed to Chase by telephone.
Although a successful pilot living in New York with his family, Chase is
stirred to rethink his career after Jason's funeral. At the reading of Jason's
will, Angela and Chase both discover Chase has been bequeathed 50-acres of
Falcon Crest's prime acreage - thereby setting up a bitter rivalry between
Angela and Chase – who refuses to sell back the land to her. Instead, Chase
moves into the valley with wife, Maggie and their two adult children, Cole and
Victoria (Jamie Rose), the latter having broken from a bittersweet relationship
with a much older man back home. Angela first tries to buy the land back from
Chase at the market value, but to no avail. Next, she attempts to ruin Chase's
opportunities to advance the quality of his stake in the vineyard by
threatening every bank in the Bay area to refuse him the much-needed loan to
make his improvements. Meanwhile, Angela's playboy grandson, Lance Cumson
(Lorenzo Lamas) has become increasingly difficult to manage. He even blows up
one of Chase's wells to further hasten his defeat.
To tame her young charge, Angela brokers a loveless
marriage between Lance and Melissa Agretti (Ana Alicia), the daughter of a
profitable rival vineyard landowner. It is Angela's hope the marriage will
translate into an alliance between Falcon Crest and the Agretti Wineries to
effectively squeeze Chase and his family out of their fair share once and for
all. Instead, it only serves as another source of friction between Angela and
Lance - the latter increasingly distancing himself from Angela's control, and,
his new bride, indulging in casual sexual liaisons to fill his spare time.
Unfortunately for Angela – her own time is running out in Jason's murder cover-up.
Emma is increasingly prone to nervous outbursts to spill the secret to Chase. As
though to prove itself the valiant successor to Dallas, its preceding
soap opera on CBS, Falcon Crest: Season 1 very much becomes embroiled in
all sorts of backroom backstabbing and sexual byplay. However, rather than
merely aping Dallas, Season 1 of Falcon Crest is a
superlative maelstrom of good writing, deviously delicious from its debut
episode to its first of many climactic season cliffhangers.
Most regrettably, the same cannot be said for Warner
Home Video's travesty of video mastering herein. Falcon Crest Season 1 is
so hopelessly marred by extremely color fading, chroma-bleeding, and other
digitally imposed anomalies, the image throughout is a disaster, virtually
unwatchable, and riddled in edge effects, video noise and other age-relate
artifacts. Like Dallas, Falcon Crest was shot on 35mm film stock.
The video masters used here appear to have been derived from some intermediary ‘tape’ version – inheriting all of the flaws and shortcomings of that format. It’s odd, and
very disappointing, because the image, especially in long shots, literally
breaks apart. There is so much noise and chroma bleeding here, the visual
presentation fares no better than a bootlegged VHS copy, with wan contrast and
flesh tones that are piggy pink or ruddy orange. Truly, this is one of the
worst mastering efforts of a beloved television series yet to debut on any
format - and so undeserving of a show as vibrantly written and luminously acted
as Falcon Crest. Warner Home Video ought to be sincerely ashamed of their
'efforts' put forth herein. The audio is 1.0 Dolby Digital mono but suffers
from an uncharacteristically muffled quality. Warner Home Video delivers one
final blow to fans of this show - virtually NO extras. Clearly, the studio does
not consider it a successor to Dallas – which has been afforded a lot of
extras. Not recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
0
EXTRAS
0
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